I Saw the Smirk With My Eyes, But Felt It in My Gut

I have stared into that Magic Eye picture from last weekend. I have tried to relax my eye muscles just enough for the silently prayerful, tension-diffusing committed Catholic boy to emerge.

And I’m sorry, but he hasn’t.

I still see only a howling horde of kids, Tomahawk-chopping and roaring with laughter at a Native American, one smirking young man in the center. I see the same display of unearned, unexamined, vaguely menacing privilege that I did on Saturday.

In the days since the incident on the National Mall, the revelation which is supposed to have changed everything is that Nathan Phillips approached the group of kids, and not the other way around. Who approached whom is only relevant if one 64-year-old man with a single drum is more menacing than a gang of teenage boys. The kids are still cackling at an elder, still mocking him with war whoops. The behavior, in its most generous interpretation, is dishonorable.

That face is me at that age, joining in the abuse of the gayest kid in class, on the days when I managed to work my way to second-gayest.

The smirk of privilege, framed by MAGA hats and mocking laughter, is all that’s there, despite what the kid in the picture—via the public relations firm his family had the means to retain—says. It is unmistakable, which is why the image was shared as widely as it was. It would not have gone viral if it didn’t resonate, if we hadn’t seen this particular strain of American smirk as long as we’ve had photography.

We’ve seen it on the faces of the white people intimidating black patrons at the Woolworth’s lunch counter, in the pictures of freshly-integrated high schools in Little Rock. We’ve seen it in our own personal histories, if we have ever been that terrifying combination of young and different in any way. We saw that smirk with our eyes, but we felt it in our stomachs.

An African-American boy walks through a crowd of white boys in 1957 on his way to school in Little Rock, Arkansas, as schools in the city were integrating black and white students.

UniversalImagesGroupGetty Images

One reason this experience has been so uncomfortable is that many of us see ourselves in that face. There’s no use pretending I don’t. I grew up in this kind of environment, at this kind of school. That face is me at that age, joining in the abuse of the gayest kid in class, on the days when I managed to work my way to second-gayest. It’s me when I didn’t stop the handful of my high school classmates from chanting, “It’s alright, it’s okay, you’re gonna work for us someday,” at the kids from a poorer high school when they were beating us in basketball. I’ve made this face, I’ve laughed at someone the way these kids laughed at Nathan Phillips, and I have the restless sleep to prove it.

If my classmates and I are any better at being people now, it’s because we became adults and we listened and we learned. And here’s a scary thought: those kids are becoming adults, listening to and learning from this world. They are coming of age right now, when gleeful sadism is celebrated and rewarded. Right now, when the president of the United States can’t pull it together to condemn Nazis. I’m old enough to remember when the kind of ignoble behavior we see in those videos was something you’d have to at least pretend to be ashamed of, and I’m paying enough attention to know that that’s not the case anymore. The world is getting meaner, you and I both know it. The seeds are just beginning to sprout.

A group of Trump supporters cheer for the president during a rally in Florida in October 2018.

Joe RaedleGetty Images

On that note, here is a thing that should not need to be said, but apparently does: It is possible to think that these kids behaved shamefully, and to not want their lives to be destroyed. You can want them to feel some shame for their conduct, and for that shame to inspire growth. You can try to make it a teachable moment for these kids: if we tell young black men that wearing a hoodie at night can get you executed, surely we can gently suggest to our young white men that wearing a MAGA hat and laughing at a person of color might get you roasted on Twitter. You can do that without publishing anyone’s phone number, without issuing the death threats that social media seemingly runs on.

A man places a sign showing support for the students of Covington Catholic Catholic High School in front of the Catholic Diocese of Covington in Covington, Kentucky, on Tuesday, January 22.

Bryan Woolston/AP

I hope this kid learns something, but the worst part of the story is that he doesn’t have to. He can be a martyr, a promising young life derailed by the decadence of political correctness. He can dig in and make a career out of trying to trigger people. Can’t you name a half-dozen cable-news and YouTube celebrities off the top of your head who’ve done exactly that?

In the time since I began writing this piece, NBC has announced that Savannah Guthrie will sit down with him for an interview on Today. And then later in the week, if Laura Ingraham’s Twitter feed is to be trusted, the whole Covington Catholic gang will have an audience with the president in the White House. Because while their behavior toward a Native American Vietnam veteran was disrespectful at best, at least they were wearing the right logo.

So as clearly as you saw what did happen, you can see what will. He’ll lightly brush up against consequences, soothe the burn with a 20-piece McNugget in the West Wing, and then get right on back to a life where he’s on top and everyone underneath is just a little bit ridiculous. If someday, far off in the future, his sleep is ever troubled, it will be to wonder what the big deal was.

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